I somehow missed this thread. Anyway, I don't have any recommendations for the A1-X1000 or Sam 460ex as I do not have either of these machines at present. In theory any card from the Radeon X1300 to the Radeon HD 4890 should work. Do not get a Radeon HD 5000 series card, as these are definitely not supported at present.

If you want to use the PCI slot (and you probably do), then make sure that the card that you buy is only a single-slot thick. High-end cards such as the Radeon HD 4890 take up two slots (at least, I have yet to see a single-slot version), and some of the low end cards use a double height heat sync for fanless cooling. Using these cards would block the PCI slot, rendering that slot unusable.

I recommend getting a mid-range card for the SAM 460. A low-end card seems like a bit of a waste when you've got a brand new 1.2 GHz machine; low-end cards really are "low end." At the other end, the high end cards need two slots. A mid-range card strikes a good balance, at least, IMHO.

I expect that some will criticise ACube for this, but the fact is that the flex-ATX form-factor only provides room for up to three expansion slots. The Sam 460ex uses all three of those slots (one 4x PCI-E slot, a PCI slot and a 1x PCI-E slot).

The VRAM situation is a bit complicated. Of the 1 GiB of VRAM, 256 MiB is accessible to the CPU via the PCI bus. The rest of the VRAM is only accessible by the GPU. Since Picasso96 expects all VRAM to be CPU accessible, it will use only the CPU accessible 256 MiB.

But all is not lost. The Gallium 3D drivers will be able to use the full 1 GiB, or whatever your card's VRAM size is. I am also investigating how else I can make use of the extra VRAM.

Naturally, this problem will be completely solved when Picasso96's replacement arrives.